SAHM

[Katya]

Maybe that's why I've always wanted to be a SAHM. I've never minded boring tasks. My favorite jobs were tedious. In fact, the interview for my longest (and most favorite) BYU job included the boss saying, "This job is boring. Mind-numbing. Tedious." etc. I didn't know how many synonyms there were for that!

When things are boring I can think or multi-task, or listen to books on tape or conference.

Are you truly saying that you don't find any tasks or situations boring? Or are you saying that there are jobs which most people would find repetitive and tedious, but which you find . . . meditative (to put words in your mouth)?

[Waldorf and Sauron]

Dragon Lady:

What would be your idea of the worst job ever?

[TheAnswerIs42]

See, and it isn't the tediousness that gets me. It's the repitition. I spent hours today scrubbing the house so that we could host Teachers and Mia Maids tonight, and I'm sure that my toddlers will make it all a mess again in two days tops. I love my craft hobbies because it gives me something that I finished that STAYS DONE. Nothing else in my daily task list is like that. Feeding kids, changing diapers, picking up toys, even going to the gym - just when you pat yourself on the back for doing a great job, it's like it never happened and time to do it all over again.

Oh, and the isolation. I miss adult conversations, which is why I come here and elsewhere on the internet. Moms are very busy people, so making friends is tricky.

[Dragon Lady]

Maybe that's why I've always wanted to be a SAHM. I've never minded boring tasks. My favorite jobs were tedious. In fact, the interview for my longest (and most favorite) BYU job included the boss saying, "This job is boring. Mind-numbing. Tedious." etc. I didn't know how many synonyms there were for that!

When things are boring I can think or multi-task, or listen to books on tape or conference.

Are you truly saying that you don't find any tasks or situations boring? Or are you saying that there are jobs which most people would find repetitive and tedious, but which you find . . . meditative (to put words in your mouth)?

Oh, heavens no. (To the first.) There are definitely many boring things out there. I guess I'm saying that I don't mind doing boring things (usually). I learned long ago that I tend to excel at tedious things. Maybe that just means I have a simple mind.

Dragon Lady:

What would be your idea of the worst job ever?

Oh goodness. Tough question. Cleaning out out houses? Anything that's just gross. Or anything that requires heavy physical labor. Or anything dealing with poetry-esque traits. (I reserve the right to add to this list as I think of other things.)

[Hypatia]

Dragon Lady, I nearly gagged when I saw your worst job. Ew. Some things are just too gross to talk about.

However, I think I just invented the next Dominion card: Outhouse Cleaner An opponent of your choosing takes three curses for every victory card in your fellow players' hands (your hand included). Doesn't that sound like my kind of card?

[Kissables]

I was fortunate enough to grow up with a working mother who taught me more and gave me more opportunities than I would ever have been able if she was a stay at home mom. I never felt neglected or wished that she was a SAHM. I was proud of her and showed her off to my friends. I always thought was mom was so amazing how she could balance everything. She had a very demanding full-time job, taught seminary and gospel doctrine, helped us with homework, and kept our house spotless.
I thought that this was normal until I came to BYU, and the first guy I dated told me that he would never allow his wife to work because children of working moms are more likely to become neurotic and psycho because they are neglected.
I'm not sure what SAHMs do when their kids are all in school, but I suppose just knowing that your mom is at home doing laundry is less likely to make you a serial killer.
Nevertheless, I will not be a SAHM, and would never marry a man who would not support my career. Being a working mother is twice as hard as being a SAHM because you are doing twice as much.

Changing diapers and listening to your child cry is difficult. So is doing all that and being a doctor.


And I don't think bodily fluids are all that gross. I've seen some nasty injuries while babysitting. Once I was watching an 8ish year old and she fell off a swing and broke her arm and the bone was sticking out. I also had to clean up a kid and wash his bed when I was watching his and 2 siblings for the weekend and his diaper exploded. Everywhere.

[Imogen]

Marduk, I can only say you've obviously never met my mother. She ALWAYS had everything done in less time than most working moms because of her weird schedule. She is amazing. She didn't need twelve hours to do laundry and clean the house because she stayed on top of things. And still does. She's retired now, and she can't stand being home all day. She travels, works out, and STILL manages to have dinner ready for my stepdad and stepbrothers each night and their clothes clean.

Seriously, she's amazing. I can only hope to be the mother she was to me.

[thebigcheese]

I thought that this was normal until I came to BYU, and the first guy I dated told me that he would never allow his wife to work because children of working moms are more likely to become neurotic and psycho because they are neglected.

MAJOR pet peeve of mine. I would have broken up with that guy on the spot.

Being a working mother is twice as hard as being a SAHM because you are doing twice as much.

And I disagree with this from a sanity standpoint. Work is a sanity break for many mothers -- a chance to finally escape toddler land.

[wired]

This is an interesting conversation to me. I think it is very hard for anyone to be objective about this. Further, we're all working from anecdotal experience. I'd like to see some raw data on stay-at-home moms and outcomes on criminal behavior (controlling for income, location, etc.). Anyone want to find an empirical paper on it since I have to study for other things?

I think we can categorically state that having a working mom or stay-at-home mom does not control one's outcome and that working moms can still be loving. Certainly there are gradients of the two and the worst of one won't be as good as the best of the other. But, I'd like to see the controlled effect.

[Katya]

Maybe that's why I've always wanted to be a SAHM. I've never minded boring tasks. My favorite jobs were tedious. In fact, the interview for my longest (and most favorite) BYU job included the boss saying, "This job is boring. Mind-numbing. Tedious." etc. I didn't know how many synonyms there were for that!

When things are boring I can think or multi-task, or listen to books on tape or conference.

Are you truly saying that you don't find any tasks or situations boring? Or are you saying that there are jobs which most people would find repetitive and tedious, but which you find . . . meditative (to put words in your mouth)?

Oh, heavens no. (To the first.) There are definitely many boring things out there. I guess I'm saying that I don't mind doing boring things (usually). I learned long ago that I tend to excel at tedious things. Maybe that just means I have a simple mind.

I think I'm very similar to you in that I don't mind a lot of repetitive tasks. (I'm doing some very repetitive HTML coding right now, but I just listen to a podcast and I'm fine.) That said, there are also a lot of situations which I find horribly tedious, mainly if I have to interact with other people. I.e., I'd much rather do repetitive HTML coding by myself for hours—even without a podcast or a book on tape—than have to make small talk with a random person for fifteen minutes. (Of course, a lot of that is probably because I'm such an introvert.)

[Katya]

This is an interesting conversation to me. I think it is very hard for anyone to be objective about this. Further, we're all working from anecdotal experience. I'd like to see some raw data on stay-at-home moms and outcomes on criminal behavior (controlling for income, location, etc.). Anyone want to find an empirical paper on it since I have to study for other things?

I think we can categorically state that having a working mom or stay-at-home mom does not control one's outcome and that working moms can still be loving. Certainly there are gradients of the two and the worst of one won't be as good as the best of the other. But, I'd like to see the controlled effect.

I haven't found anything on criminal behavior yet, but here's what I've got so far:

V. FIRST-YEAR MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT AND CHILD SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT. (2010). Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 75(2), 59-69. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5834.2010.00567.x

The article discusses the assessment results regarding the relationship of first-year maternal employment to the growth of social and emotional outcomes in children. It states that evaluation of children aging at 3, 4.5, and first grade involves regression analysis, wherein several outcomes were considered including attachment security and peer competence. It notes that there were no major variations between non-Hispanic white children of full-time (FT) working mothers and children of non-working mothers. It mentions that children of FT working mothers in the first year have inferior social and emotional growth as compared to children of mothers with a part time (PT) employment. Moreover, coefficients between PT and FT employment in African-American children exhibit a minor difference.

Brown, J. E., Broom, D. H., Nicholson, J. M., & Bittman, M. (2010). Do working mothers raise couch potato kids? Maternal employment and children's lifestyle behaviours and weight in early childhood. Social Science & Medicine, 70(11), 1816-1824. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.01.040

Alarm about the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity has focussed attention on individual lifestyle behaviours that may contribute to unhealthy weight. More distal predictors such as maternal employment may also be implicated since working mothers have less time to supervise children''s daily activities. The research reported here used two waves of data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children to investigate whether mothers'' hours in paid work shape young children''s television viewing, snacking and physical activity, and through those lifestyle behaviours, children''s weight at ages 4–5 years and 6–7 years. At both ages, children''s lifestyle behaviours were interrelated and associated with weight status. Cross-sectional analysis confirmed small, direct associations between longer hours of maternal employment and child weight at age 4–5 years, but not with child''s weight measured two years later. In both the cross-sectional and prospective analyses, the children of mothers who worked part-time watched less television and were less likely to be overweight than children of mothers who were not employed or who worked full-time. While associations were small, they remained significant after adjustment for maternal weight, household income and other factors. The combination of direct and indirect relationships between mothers'' work hours and the weight status of their young children provides additional support to calls for family-friendly work policies as an important means for promoting healthy family lifestyles and early childhood wellbeing.

Barglow, P., Contreras, J., Kavesh, L., & Vaughn, B. E. (1998). Developmental follow-up of 6-7 year old children of mothers employed during their infancies. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 29(1), 3-20.

This study followed up 92 children at ages 6-7 first studied as one-year-olds in order to determine differences in the developmental outcome of the offspring of employed as compared to "stay at home" mothers. The developmental domain evaluated in the 6-7 year old children was peer competence, rated by laboratory play and child psychological test instruments. Mothers' reports of children's behavioral pathology at age 6-7 correlated with a higher number of maternal work hours during the infant's first year, but the children did better during overall play situations. Age 1 attachment ratings better predicted free play social competence for the entire sample than did maternal hours of work absence, but girls accounted for statistical significance. Maternal sensitivity from infancy was associated with maternal reports of (low) problem behaviors; however, regression analyses did not support the hypothesis that relations between either work status or attachment and current problem behaviors were mediated by early maternal sensitivity.

Shpancer, N., Melick, K. M., Sayre, P. S., & Spivey, A. T. (2006). Quality of care attributions to employed versus stay-at-home mothers. Early Child Development & Care, 176(2), 183-193.

The present study was designed to find whether evaluations of maternal competence are linked to mothers' employment status and the quality of maternal care. Participants rated videotaped vignettes, depicting either high-quality or low-quality mother-infant interactions, on various dimensions of care quality. The videotaped mothers were described to one-half of the participants as 'stay-at-home mothers' and to the other half as 'working mothers.' Analysis revealed a significant main effect of type of care on maternal evaluations. 'At-home' mothers were rated as providing better care than 'working mothers.' Additionally, participants whose mothers worked and who experienced non-parental care as children were more likely to report positive attitudes about daycare and maternal employment. Finally, participants with less favorable attitudes toward maternal employment showed a more pronounced negative bias in rating high-quality working mothers.

[Katya]

Here's something a little closer to what you were looking for (but it's from 1983):

Montemayor, R., & Clayton, M. D. (1983). Maternal Employment and Adolescent Development. Theory Into Practice, 22(2), 112.

Examines the social and intellectual development of adolescents with employed mothers. Variety of psychological problems as a result of adolescent's repeated separations from their mother; Increase of the risk of negative peer influences leading to involvement in a variety of illicit and illegal acts.

[Katya]

I couldn't find any results in EBSCO for subject "children of working mothers" and keyword "criminal."

[thebigcheese]

Or anything that requires heavy physical labor.

Heh. Sounds like we have opposite tastes. I can't stand mundane jobs that have me sitting at a desk all day. I worked as a wall painter for a few years, and I've considered careers in things like construction, landscaping, forest firefighting, and carpentry.

[Katya]

Or anything that requires heavy physical labor.

Heh. Sounds like we have opposite tastes. I can't stand mundane jobs that have me sitting at a desk all day. I worked as a wall painter for a few years, and I've considered careers in things like construction, landscaping, forest firefighting, and carpentry.

This is why you're a runner and we're not.

[thebigcheese]

I was actually thinking the same thing!

[Dragon Lady]

I don't mind physical labor, so long as it's not heavy physical labor. I'd love to be a gardener, for example. If I could go back and do my degree again, I'd do it in botany or horticulture.

But I don't mind desk jobs, either.

[krebscout]

Being a working mother is twice as hard as being a SAHM because you are doing twice as much.

Nonsense.

You're thinking of this from the point of view of moms with older kids, kids in school. When you have younger kids, kids who cannot feed, dress, or potty themselves, and must be watched nonstop to keep from killing themselves, you either have to care for them yourself or pay someone else to care for them while you work. I work from home, and still I can't work and watch my kids simultaneously. I do it while they sleep or while my husband watches them.

Anyway, the completely-dependent-on-mom-or-daycare phase lasts at least three years per child (longer if you don't do preschool), so depending on the number of children you have that's quite a while for a stay-at-home to do just as much work as someone who works those hours in an office instead.

As for moms whose kids are all in school, sure, I'll grant you that a well-balanced working mom will probably get more accomplished than someone who stays home and plays bridge with her girlfriends.

[Dragon Lady]

krebscout, that's what I've been trying to work out how to say.

Sure, both a working mom and a SAHM can both effectively keep their houses clean at the end of the day, but a SAHM cleans up 3-4 times (if not vastly more, but I'm trying to be conservative here) the messes that the working mom does. Unless, of course, the working mom goes and cleans up the daycare when she picks up her child.

[TheAnswerIs42]

Being a working mother is twice as hard as being a SAHM because you are doing twice as much.

Nonsense.

Anyone else feeling like this is some sort of competition where everyone loses? We've got two camps here insulting each other's mothers, no matter how kind they are trying to be about it. I'm starting to feel like we're saying that the most busy person wins the right to declare everyone else slackers. I don't see any resolution in anyone's future.

Each family has to do what they feel best for their family. The end.